Colophon

Burr is a staff research scientist and engineer at Duolingo, and also runs FAWM.ORG. He wants to use technology to help people reach their potential. He’s written a book on active learning (a subfield of machine learning & artificial intelligence), several research papers, and some pop songs. He tweets random quotes, links, and recipes.

The title is a portmanteau of slacker (a Gen-X work ethic, not always synonymous with “lazy”) and backpropagation (an algorithm by which artificial neural networks learn from their mistakes).

“I know I’m supposed to be singin’. But you can’t always do what you’re supposed to do.” ~ Arlo Guthrie (from Celery-Time)